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You tell yourself you haven't always been this pathetic.
You've spent many hours in stupors, passed out on bathroom floors, hallways, stairs even, waking to a pain in your head, your joints, your heart that would only grow worse over time unless you got another fix – to alleviate the emotional impact if not the physical one – and sometimes you don't, because you're unable to move, unable to do anything but sink deeper into the pit of despair that lurks so far below the surface mere cutting tools don't reach it anymore.
Yeah, you've been there and you've grown used to it, used to starting awake in strangers' cars, in stranger's beds, on strange piles of shards and other things with jagged, rending edges, like yesterday's trash, broken and forgotten.
You've grown used to starting awake to strangers in your house, on your floor, your bed, (on you – like your body's a blow-up doll and no longer yours when your consciousness vacates it for a while), used to loud music, fast cars, and neon strobe lights, used to having crowds around you, fawning over you, spewing the same sycophantic bullshit as anyone else, while their drinks slosh dangerously in their cups and their fingers find their way into your hair, your mouth, your pockets, turned inside out in search for what only you can give them: the ride of their lives.
Disorientation became your game and you played it till you won.
It was a way of life and you were living it. Didn't matter that you were already dead inside.
You've been in a string of pathetic situations before you learned to ride the buzz and not let it ride you, before you learned that staying high and staying in control were not mutually exclusive even if it was fun for a time to give up one for the other. Keeps you on your toes.
Going up, you never worried about coming down. You never worried about anything.
So, you've been fucked up a lot, but you've never felt as fucked up as you do now, empty and shaking and so alone. There are texts on your phone, but your thumbs are too numb to open them, the screen is screeching at your eyes, and the messages are garbled as if the words had been thrown into a blender. They don't go through to you.
Inside your chest, a nauseating merry-go-round made of razor wire is slicing at you, whittling you away, carving you hollow.
You like to think you haven't always been this way. That there's a progression to these things.
Yours seems inevitable enough.
You still remember the days before now, before this, before everything, although you try your best to erase them, line by fucking line. It's easier to forget than to go running around with all that baggage. Who needs that shit anyway?
You were a sweet-faced boy, the aunts told you, by which they meant you looked like a girl. You hated that.
They weren't your aunts, anyway, but wives of the men who worked for your father, and they came by to keep your mother company when he was away. Or busy. Or both. Which was all the time. You thought of them as a flock of birds for their matching outfits, their gleaming jewelry, their impeccable hair, the way they tittered and they cooed, and how you've never seen one arrive without the others.
So they perched on the sofa and the armchairs, coffee cups daintily placed on their saucers, and they sang their merry tune of how lucky your mother was for having such a sweet boy, such an angel, he does so take after you, dear. They simpered, pinched your cheeks, ruffled your hair, and you hated it at the time, hated that you had to be still and smile and endure it, because if you did, they'd stop fussing sooner instead of later, growing bored with you as if you sort of faded into the background.
But you liked the attention all the same. At least somebody noticed you for a while.
The aunts brought their sons, if they had them, and brought toys if they didn't. Action figures, toy cars, dinosaurs, whatever they'd been told young boys your age were crazy about. Or they brought stories about how they would also like a son, a healthy, strong son, because their husbands wanted one, so that is what they should want, too. Maybe they did, but you couldn't tell, you could only overhear bits and pieces when you sneaked into the kitchen to get away from the other boys.
You were supposed to be playing with them, be nice to them, but they weren't nice to you, so why should you care? You were small, you were fine-boned and you were pretty, and nobody liked you.
But it was okay, you didn't like them either.
Except that you did, in ways you didn't understand at the time, because nobody told you about these things and you never had the chance to figure them out for yourself.
Maybe they didn't like the implications of you, maybe you made them feel something they weren't supposed to feel, maybe there's always been something despicable about you. Maybe that was it. All you know is that they teased you, that they made you cry because of it, and that your father didn't want a cry-baby for a son. He never called you his son, he called you other things that took you years to understand, things that the boys in your backyard echoed before they wrestled you to the ground and stuffed sticks and soil and sand into your mouth and made you swallow.
You still remember their names or what names they called you, what they looked like, what they made you feel.
Your father never said anything to the boys or their fathers. Why would he? It would draw attention to what a pathetic weakling you were and he was probably too ashamed of you already. His preferred method of making sure you wouldn't get beat up again was taking the matter out of their hands. You earned yourself a clout whenever he caught you sniveling, sometimes even if it was from a cold, and sometimes he wouldn't stop until you stopped.
Sometimes you wondered if he wanted you to stop completely.
You were supposed to stand up for yourself, that was the understanding.
Your mother didn't like how he ruined your face, you were her handsome boy after all, but she also did nothing to stop him. That was fine with you. If he used his fists on you, maybe he wouldn't have to use them on her. (That was before she took to hitting you as well, you devil child, you cursed evil thing, when you still had some loyalty in you, some sense of solidarity.) He never hit her face, but a shiner or two on yours were okay because it detracts from your looks and adds character. Simple as that.
It's a lesson you took to heart and made use of at school. Your father liked to see you get into fights, liked it when you came home with scarred knuckles and split skin, when you proved to him you were a man after all and worthy of being called his son.
You stare into the mirror.
Nothing stares back.
You're seeing through yourself, at the wall in the back, or maybe the back of your head. It's dark in there, it must be, you cannot see the light.
You're covered in gasoline and someone struck a match. Your skin is burning.
This is what his touch must feel like. Around your throat, squeezing the life out of you. Whatever life there is left of you.
You splash some water on your face and it reappears in the mirror.
Pretty thing, they used to call you. They used to beat you up for it, as if your looks were somehow offensive to them.
No one would call you pretty now, with your sunken cheeks, broken nose and bloodshot eyes, and you prefer it that way.
You conceal the damage of last night and the many nights before with white sunglasses and a grin that's as changeable as your mood while it remains one thing at its core. An impenetrable fortress.
Your parents may have taught you something useful, after all.
There must have been a time when you thought your parents loved you, that they just couldn't show it in words or gestures, so they showered you with gifts to distract you from their emptiness that was becoming your emptiness.
"You need to stop spoiling him," they told each other when they thought you couldn't hear, but they never did.
When you woke up to yet another gift on your pillow, one you've been wishing for very hard but never had the chance to tell them about, you thought it was their way of saying sorry for being so distant. You thought it was their way of soothing you after your nightmares.
You were delighted by it when you were very small, and put off by it as you grew older, because you saw it as a cheap ploy to buy your loyalty. Fuck that.
Until you noticed they didn't get you anything.
"You're spoiling him too much. He's soft enough."
"I thought you got him this toy."
The answer to this riddle, however, was a much better gift than anything they could have given you.
You know now that every gift comes with strings attached. And sometimes, those strings are darkness itself.
Come to think of it, your mother never hit you before your very existence started to threaten her sanity. Not that she'd had much of it to begin with, but your dreaming didn't help exactly. It only exacerbated it. And then, when you killed your father and he still continued living after that, well, that was the end of it. She never let you live that one down.
Or she wouldn't, if you kept her sedated any less. She prefers the brain fog to the knowledge of what you are, too. Otherwise she could have left a long time ago. Tried to, in fact, but even with her means, she was unable to find anything that killed her brain better than what you provided for free.
Family discount.
For a time, your dreams had been claustrophobic, bat-infested fabrications that left you more exhausted coming out than going in. Hand-sized spiders used to skitter over your face and crawl into your mouth, their hairy legs sticking to your throat and suffocating the screams you never got a chance to form. No amount of alcohol could wash away that sick feeling of thousands of tiny legs ghosting over your skin. Once, you woke up to a fucker crawling through your goddamn hair.
Those were the harmless dreams. You try not to think about the ones you used to wake up from trembling and paralyzed.
You decided then and there that if you had to sleep, it would be on your terms or not at all.
Your insomnia became a cultivated thing. Sleep was worth fuck-all, so you skipped it entirely when you could. Where there was no sleep, there could be no dreams, no nightmares, no dream-creatures that would eat you alive when you paid no attention.
Yet even if you didn't fall asleep, you still passed out from exhaustion, crashed after nights of drug-fueled parties, or simply phased in and out of microsleep while you were coming down from another high. Your body sucked you into the dream that became a prison to you in that state. Briars snarled around your throat and limbs, shredded through layers of fabric and tore up the skin underneath.
You still have markings to show for that. Tattoos cover up your scars.
With a little help from the right pills, you learned to manipulate the dream, to not play by its rules and let it rip you to pieces. You became stealthy, daring, able to create whatever it was you wanted. Waking up with ever more complex constructs was a high like no other. You were king of the world and no one would be standing in your way anymore.
Not even your father.
That was in Jersey. Henrietta was a different story altogether. Henrietta gave you the chance to reinvent yourself.
In Henrietta, you made a name for yourself right away. You established yourself as the procurer of substances, forgeries, all the good black-market stuff. And of course as the host of the wildest parties imaginable. The guys look up to you and the girls throw themselves at your feet. You have no problem going home with a different girl on your arm every night, maybe two, if you were so inclined.
The best thing is that no one's implying anything anymore. No one's cornering you in the locker room or dragging you behind the school buildings anymore.
No one would dare.
You're popular now. You're untouchable. You have a gun in your car and a switchblade in your pocket, and you need nobody's protection.
You're still not very tall – the cigarettes have stunted your growth – and you don't always win, but you can hold your own in a fight.
It bores you after a while, the fights, the parties, the drag racing, the certainty to have everything you want, even the power to create everything other people want, to make them beg for it and watch them be stupid about it. It's becoming repetitive when no one is able to challenge you on your turf, but for the lack of other options, you chase away the boredom with another line and party harder.
You have nothing to lose. With enough booze in your system, everything begins to feel wavering and dream-like.
This life on the edge – of Henrietta, of sleep, of death – is where you belong.
That change you were looking for, it came in the form of Ronan Lynch. When you first got to Henrietta, Lynch was just another nobody. You only heard of him months later, when he slowly gained a reputation for being a right asshole.
He was just another blip on your radar until that one night you were wasted on weed and smoking from Proko's dorm room window.
Kindred, you thought.
The word had shredded itself into your brain the moment Lynch had woken with wounds blooming on his wrists, miraculous like fucking stigmata.
I know what you are.
For a moment you were shocked, the weight of recognition settling in your bones.
You were not at all special. There are others like you out there.
So yeah, it did rub you the wrong way for a moment, because it felt like there suddenly were rivals out there, contenders for your throne, people you needed to keep an eye on.
Yet that was nothing compared to the way your mind came alive with ideas, all the beautiful, terrible things you could be doing together, two dreamers. Still, you first had to tease out whether he actually was someone you wanted to be spending time with. People are so goddamn tedious and just because he was like you, didn't automatically make you like him any more.
How glorious this revelation was, though.
You felt like a starving dog who'd been thrown a bone, and you'd be gnawing this bone right to the marrow. Finally something to stave off the boredom. At least for a while, at least until you could know for sure.
You'd find out what makes him tick and if he turned out to be the sort of excitement you'd been looking for—well, you were already counting on adding him to your posse.
But he needed to come to you. From what you'd seen, you could gather he was a fucking amateur. He needed to understand that you had a whole world of possibilities to reveal to him.
He'd be going fucking insane before you were done showing him half of what you know.
Oh, you were so looking forward to it.
It became an obsession in its purest form.
His attention was hilariously easy to get. A couple of taunts here, a couple of party invitations there, with some disregard for personal space in between, and what do you know, he couldn't ignore you if he wanted to. You pissed him off and enjoyed every second of it.
Eventually, you took your little game to the streets.
You'd flirted with death so many times in the streets of Henrietta, something you knew made the blood in his veins sing, because he always came back for more. Always came alone too, because his master wouldn't approve.
It filled you with so much pride and giddy glee that this goddamn lapdog still had a mind of his own and would gladly miss out on some bellyrubs to race you. Those were the moments you lived for. Just the two of you, the roar of engines, the exhilaration of using what's under the hood, and burning rubber beneath your feet.
In these moments, Lynch was beautiful the way a car crash was beautiful: all sharpness and loud noise, impossible to tear your eyes from but inevitably painful if you're caught too fucking close.
But fuck, you couldn't have imagined how frustrating it was gonna be. Lynch had got to be the most obstinate person you'd ever met. You should have counted the times you hinted at the secret you both share, because that was exactly how many times he didn't get a fucking a clue.
Maybe if you had, you could have requested compensation for all the nerves you'd invested.
Lynch craved the same kind of danger you did, something to free him of his fucking grief and anxiety, and to replace it with a soaring high that put all his worries to sleep better than any tranquilizer.
You know that high. You invented it.
In the end, he didn't want it from your hands. Does that surprise you, you pathetic fool? You have never been good enough. What made you think this time would be different?
Because you were the same? What fucking bullshit.
All he ever wanted was what you could teach him. No more than that. He didn't share your grand vision of the future, the only future you could accept: him and you, kings of the world. Through death, dreams, and destruction.
It could have been so beautiful.
Except for the part where he's just like the others. Just using you for his own gains. Never so much as a please and thank you.
You gave him everything, and he gave you nothing.
Less than nothing, because he stripped you bare and carved you hollow, leaving only rage and desperation to take his place.
You've had enough to drink for a lifetime, but there's a restlessness eating you up from inside that you need to douse and you know just the thing to do it with.
It comes in a plain vodka bottle, looks and tastes like lighter fuel, and the fumes alone are strong enough to intoxicate you three ways from Sunday.
The best part about it, however, is how much it burns. Every swig of that hellish concoction is another splash of kerosene onto that ever-raging fire that is consuming the very fiber of your being.
You know who you have to thank for stoking it, for making it so unbearable to take another goddamn fucking breath.
Family, you think. It's more of a curse than a thought, really. But it rams itself into your head with the force of a sledgehammer.
Family. Now there's an idea.
Revenge is a simple equation, although its outcome is rarely satisfying. It's rarely enough. You want the other person to feel the same pain you feel, and no matter what you do to them, they will never come close.
You only ever wanted one thing: to not be alone anymore.
You thought he was a kindred spirit. You thought with him, the shit you've been through wouldn't matter anymore. You thought you could bet your salvation all on one person and expect to walk out victorious.
It was not enough. It's never enough.
You're never enough.
For as long as you can remember, you've been waiting for your situation to improve.
You no longer want to wait. He took that away from you. So you take something of his, something that ought to get his attention.
You didn't think it would matter much, it's just a forgery, after all. But it's his favorite, and he loves it more than he loves you.
You could have had everything together. But he didn't want it. Didn't want you. He rejected your entire being. And now, there's nothing left for you. Life won't ever get better than this, and you won't ever feel less alone than this.
The only thing you do have left is the power to end it all.
So you make use of it.
You become your own grand finale.